The glowing core of the magic of the Golf R is that it’s a hot hatch. There’s a reason I tend to own cars with around 50 hp.īut here’s the thing: you’re not as stupid as I am! You’re better than me, in all sorts of rich and exciting ways, and you can reward yourself with a car like the Golf R! In fact, maybe you should, because do you really want an SUV or a crossover as your next car? If so, why? If not, then great, because you can have something that’s an absolute blast to drive and is somehow practical for daily use, too. There’s just certain sensations I’ll abandon all rationality to experience, and if a cruel scientist put me in a cage with a switch that could either give me a nutrient pellet or trigger those parts of my brain that gave me those sorts of feelings, I’m pretty certain within a week or so some unfortunate lab assistant will be grimacing as they dump my emaciated body from the cage into a dumpster, a big dumb smile on my face. I have pretty solid control over a lot of aspects of myself – I’m slow to anger, I tend not to panic when things go sideways, I try to be patient – but it seems that if you put me behind the wheel of something quick and fun in just the right way, I become a complete moron. It’s so fast and grippy and precise and rewarding to really wring out that I found myself, shamefully, driving like an absolute maniac. I would love it! But it would be a terrible idea, which I learned from the week I had one. But not because I don’t want one, because I do. If I sold my middle kidney tomorrow and had the roughly $45,000 needed to buy a Golf R, would I? No. Lots of the others were fine, even pleasant, but it was this Golf R that ignited some gleeful, moronic spark of visceral joy deep in my lizard brain and made me do ill-advised things. Out of that parade of modern, advanced, luxurious SUVs and crossovers that glided in and out of my driveway, it was the only one that I can say I genuinely reveled in driving. The reason why this car, the 2023 Volkswagen Golf R, is the one I started with is pretty simple: it’s the one that’s still parked in my brain. Recently I’ve had a good sized chain of press cars to review, and thanks to my near-superhuman procrastination abilities, this is the first one I’ve gotten around to finally writing.

It’s been a while, but I remember the Way of the Hot Hatch.

Toyota commercial kick it up a notch